Have You Forgotten How to Love Yourself?
by songstress42
Summary: SongFic! Short ficlets based on verses from the Red House Painters song Have You Forgotten. Not Slash but there are mentions of unrequited love, child abuse, murder, suicide and drug use.


Have You Forgotten by Red House Painters (now Sun Kil Moon) is possibly the most heartbreakingly beautiful song ever written and for some reason every line of it reminds me of Sherlock and John. If you haven't heard it you should check it out.

I personally prefer the slightly faster version (found here: http:/ / you tu . be / t7aLPQEfrFE ) but there is also a great slow version (found here: http:/ / you tu . be / B0S-wOVRm28 ) that was on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack.

And the Largo from Vivaldi's winter can be found here: http:/ / you tu . be / dggfA9Vo64U

WARNING: The Story contains mentions of Child Abuse, Murder, Drug Use and Attempted Suicide. Don't like, don't read.

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><p><em>I can't let you be, cause your beauty won't allow me <em>

_wrapped in white sheets, like an angel from a bedtime story_

Despite how creepy and invasive it may seem, John loves to watch Sherlock sleep. Considering how unconcerned Sherlock is in terms of social norms and personal space, John does not consider it an invasion of privacy and besides, he has woken up many times to find Sherlock sitting in his room so there.

He watches the breath flow in and out, watches the eyes dart quickly under closed eyelids. He loves the way the white of the sheets brings colour into his normally pale skin. He loves the way Sherlock can be so still in sleep when he barely stops moving while awake. But most of all he loves how young Sherlock looks. All the walls are torn down, all the pain that darkens and clouds his expression is gone and he looks a good ten years younger.

It is when Sherlock's asleep that John can pretend that he is capable of reciprocating his feelings, and even though he knows he'd kidding himself he is willing to take what he can get because just getting to share all that he does with the mad genius is worth the pain of knowing he can never truly be with the one he loves.

_and shut out what they say, cause your friends are fucked up anyway_

_and when they come around, somehow they feel up and you feel down._

Sometimes John wonders whether Donovan and Anderson aren't the sociopaths considering how much sadistic pleasure they get from picking on Sherlock. For the most part Sherlock will feign indifference and fire back something even more incisive and cutting, but once, when John was late to meet Sherlock at a crime scene, he'd come round a corner to find Donovan throw a particularly nasty comment at the detective and once Sherlock had spoken his comeback, he turned around and John saw his normally flawless façade crack just for a moment and an overwhelming amount of hurt and pain suddenly flare up before being pushed down once again into whatever dark corner Sherlock stored all of his other 'useless' emotions. John said nothing. He knew it would do no good. But when Sally went to leave the scene she did find all the tires on her car strangely low on air.

_When we were kids, we hated things our parents did_

_we listened low to Casey Kasem's radio show_

Sherlock has one happy memory of Mycroft from his childhood.

Sherlock had never been particularly close to his older brother, seven years is after all quite a large age gap for a child, but that had never stopped him looking up to Mycroft as the pinnacle of all that was good and brave and true. Mycroft had always been off with his friends when Sherlock was stuck at home. Mycroft was allowed to accompany their father on his hunting expeditions while Sherlock was told he was too little. Mycroft was aloud to stay up after dinner with the adults while Sherlock was sent to bed after supper. Sherlock longed for the attention of his older brother and Mycroft's attentions were forever elsewhere. But one night, in the summer before Mycroft was to go away to school, Sherlock was woken by another one of his parent's shouting matches and he crept out of his room and along the corridor to the landing where he could peek down to the lower level of the house to appease his ever growing curiosity.

The argument was a particularly loud one and though he was always curious about it, it also never failed to upset him a great deal and when he heard the telltale sound of a slap, he flinched involuntarily, tears prickling in the corners of his five-year-old eyes. It was then that Mycroft emerged from the shadows of the hallway, took Sherlock by the hand and led him silently to his bedroom. There they hid under the covers with torches and Mycroft's wireless. They listened to classical music. He cannot remember every piece that was played but he did remember one in particular. The Largo from the Winter concerto of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. He remembered the bittersweetness of the violin's solo line as it soothed the worries of his mind, lying there in a world of their own, just him and his brother.

Though Sherlock would later grow to resent his brother's absence from his life and subsequent pathetic attempts to make up for the guilt he seemed to feel at leaving his baby brother alone in a house with a frivolous mother and an angry, abusive father, when Sherlock was in the midst of a particularly frustrating case or in the deepest depths of boredom, out would come the violin and his fingers would pick out the shimmering notes of their own volition and he would feel his mind eased somewhat by the nostalgia of the past.

_that's when friends were nice, to think of them just makes you feel nice_

_the smell of grass in spring and October leaves cover everything._

Sherlock had never gotten on well with his peers (Although to be fair Sherlock had never gotten on well with adults either). They teased him and called him names and never picked him for teams. The only child who ever befriended Sherlock in his young life was a girl named Ruth who moved to town mid semester when Sherlock was eight and found herself as much a social outcast as he. She approached him one day in April, after three friendless months, sitting on the lawn near the rugby pitch. Sherlock had never met a child his age for whom he did not have immediate distain and Ruth had never met a child her age whose mind was as sharp as hers. They were an intellectual match and they spent every day that spring together walking in the woods or sitting on the lawn enjoying the good fortune of having met a fellow human being to whom they were so suited.

Six-months later her body was found by the police in a field off the main road covered in red and gold leaves. The third victim of a serial killer that would leave behind two more bodies before being caught.

Every spring when the air turned sweet, Sherlock found himself drawn to the outdoors and would spent hours sitting at the open window while puzzling over some case or working to stave off the ever present boredom during the idle hours in between. And every autumn when the leaves fell from the trees in cascades of fiery hues, Sherlock would shut the door and turn his back on nature. Mourning the loss of childhood love and innocence.

_Have you forgotten how to love yourself?_

_I can't believe all the good things that you do for me_

_sat back in a chair like a princess from a faraway place_

John sat in his usual chair contemplating the drastic turn his life had taken the day he had met his current flatmate. It was such a fluke, such a coincidence that he should be strolling (or rather limping) through that park, at that time, on a day when Mike had arbitrarily decided to take his lunch in the park. That Mike should recognize him after all these years. That his living situation, of all conversation topics, had been breached and that Mike just happened to know a man looking for a flat-share.

John's mind boggled at the prospect of calculating the odds that something like that might happen again and decided he didn't even want to try.

And then there was the man himself. A man most people wouldn't even want to associate with let alone live with, and yet he seemed to be the very thing John had needed. Sherlock had brought danger, excitement, and unpredictability into what had been a frankly mundane existence and John often wondered at all the good it had done him.

Sometimes (not that he would ever admit this out loud to anyone. Ever.) he felt like Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty. Like he had been trapped in a world of gray unchangingness and Sherlock had rode in on his noble steed and breathed adventure and colour and life back into him.

_nobody's nice, when you're older your heart turns to ice_

_and shut out what they say; they're too dumb to mean it anyway_

Mycroft never learned of his father's mistreatment of Sherlock until he went to visit him at University to inform him of the man's death and found his younger brother doped up on morphine.

Having decided this was as good a state as any to receive the news of the death of one's father Mycroft went ahead and told him. Sherlock's entire lack of reaction to the news unnerved Mycroft somewhat despite his brother's current state of mind. He mentioned this thought to his brother and Sherlock shrugged.

"Why should I care?" He asked in a calm monotone.

Mycroft sighed.

"Because he was your father."

"So? He never loved me and I never loved him so why should I care if he's dead."

"Sherlock of course he loved you. You were his son."

Sherlock laughed a short laugh, "No you were his son. I was…an afterthought."

Mycroft rolled his eyes at his brothers melodramatic words, "Stop talking nonsense Sherlock, father loved you just as much as he loved me."

"Then why was I the only one who got beaten huh? It that because his love for me was something extra special?"

Mycroft was shocked into silence at his brother's words knowing that the opiates currently flooding though his system made the statement irrefutably true.

Sherlock turned then and stared at Mycroft and the older man was shocked at the cold, hard, emptiness he saw inside the man. Remorse flooded through him in cold waves as he realized the harm he bad brought (however circuitously) to his little brother in his absence from his life and vowed he would do everything in his power to keep him safe (no matter how much Sherlock may hate it).

Mycroft left Sherlock, telling him he would contact him with the details of the funeral and also with heartfelt plea to stop the careless drug-taking knowing that it fell on deaf ears.

_When we were kids, we hated things our sisters did_

_backyard summer pools and Christmases were beautiful_

_and the sentiment of coloured mirrored ornaments_

_and the open drapes look out on frozen farmhouse landscapes_

Harriet was not an easy sister to grow up with. She was loud and abrasive and her low feelings of self-worth pushed her into behavior that was borderline psychotic. When John was six and she was eight she held him underwater for a whole minute and a half before their mother noticed and screamed at her to let her brother go. When she was angry with herself she took it out on John, often screaming at the top of her lungs and sometimes ending with physical violence. John never fought back which often only helped to spur her on and their parent's obvious affection for John over her did not help her downward spiral.

Still John had happy memories of his sister. Playing outside in the pool in the summer and Christmases on their grandparent's farm. Every time John had to bail his sister out of another drunken miss-hap, he would stay with her until she passed out, watch her sleep, and think of snow and shiny Christmas baubles.

_Have you forgotten how to love yourself?_

John knew Sherlock had his ups and downs. He also knew that Sherlock's ups and downs were much more extreme than most peoples. He'd seen his flat mate in his darkest hours in his blackest moods, or at least thought he had until the day he came home to 221B Baker St to find Sherlock sitting on the kitchen floor with blood oozing from the deep gashes he'd carved in either forearm.

Luckily John had gotten there before too much blood had been spilt.

With all the calm and patience of a trained army doctor and trauma surgeon, John assessed the amount of blood his friend had lost, determined he would not need a transfusion, retrieved his well-stocked medical kit complete with sutures and began to clean and sew the wounds up. Only when the last stitch was tied off did he allow himself to expel the breath he'd been holding since walking through the door and slapped his flatmate hard across the face for scaring him like that. At least Sherlock had the decency to look ashamed of what he'd done or tried to do.

After forcing a promise out of his flatmate to Never, ever scare me like that again Sherlock do you hear me? He walked him to his bedroom and sat with him on the bed, pulling him into a fierce hug whether he liked it or not and reminded him that there were people out there who loved him but it didn't mean a bloody thing unless he loved himself too.


End file.
